The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas remembers the 14th anniversary of Israeli assassination of one of its founders Abul-Aziz al-Rantisi.

On April 17, 2004, the Israeli occupation assassinated the skillful Palestinian pediatrician Abdul-Aziz al-Rantisi, who was among seven Palestinians who announced the first statement of Hamas Movement in 1987 –a couple of days after the start of the First Intifada.

Al-Rantisi, who was born in 1947, one year before the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, when the Zionist gangs ethnically cleansed hundreds of Palestinians cities and villages, killing part of their inhabitants and driving another part of them out of their homes.

His family was forced out of Yibna, a Palestinian village occupied by the Zionist gangs in 1948, and settled in refugee camp located in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis.

As he was only six months when he family was driven out from his home, he suffered several illnesses due to the difficult life conditions. Unlike thousands of refugee children, who died during and after the war, was lucky to survive.

Refugee student

Living in a refugee camp run by the UNRWA, at the age of six, he joined the only UNRWA school which was several kilometers away from his primitive house.

He finished the high school in 1965, travelled to Egypt to study medicine and graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alexandria in 1972. He later on got a master’s degree in pediatrics from the same university.

The refugee pediatrician worked as a physician at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in 1976 and in 1978 he started to work as a lecturer of science, genetics and parasitology at the Islamic University of Gaza.

Al-Rantisi held several prestigious positions including a member of the administration body of the Islamic Compound, member of the Arab Medical Association in the Gaza Strip and member of the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Humanitarian ethics

Along with his work at Nassr Hospital and the Islamic University of Gaza, he had his own clinic at his house in the refugee camp. He treated the refugee children, whose families could not afford the costs of their treatment, for free.

Through time, the refugee pediatrician became very famous as he was faithful and committed to the ethics of his profession.

One day, when he opened the door of his clinic in the refugee camp, he chanced up an Israeli Jews standing on the other side of the street, opposite to the door of the clinic, along with his six-year-old son.

When he asked him why he was there, he said: “I was told that you are a skillful pediatrician and you might be able to treat my son. But I am afraid that you would not accept to make the medical examination for him because we are Israeli Jews!”

Al-Rantisi, who took part in establishing Hamas to fight the Israeli occupation, said: “It is true that you are my enemy, but it is unethical to let you and your child suffering while I am able to offer help.” He admitted the Israeli and his son to the clinic, examined the child and wrote the best prescription for him.

When asked about this case, he said: “We do not fight Jews or humanity, we fight an occupation that massacred out people and drove us out of our homes. If we return back home, we will lay down our guns.”

Detention

Al-Rantisi was detained by the Israeli occupation several times, starting from the 1983. He was deported along with more than 400 Hamas members and leaders and a number of Islamic Jihad operatives to south Lebanon in 1992.

He was chosen to be the spokesman of the deportees in Marj al-Zohour. When he was returned back along with most of the others, he was sent to prison again and was released in 1997.

Less than one year later, the Palestinian Authority detained in 1998, and he served 15 months in jail before being released for his mother's funeral. He was detained again three times by the Palestinian Authority.

At the beginning of the Second Intifada, the Israeli occupation bombed several of the Palestinian Authority’s facilities, including prisons. The Palestinian security services were asked to evacuate their basis before they were targeted and they did without evacuating the detainees.

The Palestinians rushed to the cells and released all the prisoners while the prisons being bombed. Most of them, including Al-Rantisi survived and joined the activities of the new intifada.

Assassination

After the Israeli occupation has assassinated the quadriplegic leader of Hamas Movement Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Al-Rantisi was chosen to run the resistance movement.

Less than a month, an Israeli occupation apache helicopter targeted his private car, killing him and two bodyguards.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza took part in the procession of his funeral and he was buried close to the tomb of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin Al-Sheikh Ridwan Cemetery in Gaza.